One pill boots your memory, another pill destroys memories you don't want to retain. One pill makes you think faster and more coherently, another pill helps you wake up more quickly, another helps you go to sleep. One pill boots your sexual performance, another helps you to relax...So how many pills are too many in one day?
Some pretty serious studies are now being done about the benefits, and downsides, of "intelligent" drugs, or "cognition enhancers" and how they could become an every day part of our lives in the coming decades.
Many of these drugs already exist, but are not primarily prescribed for the effects listed above. For example, a drug in Britain used to treat narcolepsy has been found to vastly improve short term memory - a boon for anyone studying complex subjects at school or university.
The big push to widen the non-medical usage of cognitive drugs would naturally come from pharmaceutical companies, who can sniff a new mega-billion dollar market at one hundred paces. This begins with numerous studies and non-medical debates.
Many of the benefits, or side, effects of the rapidly expanding range of cognitive drugs are already known. It's all about the marketing now, and the push to over-turn laws in countries like the US, the UK and Australia, that stop people taking 'intelligent' drugs for non-medical reasons.
As this story begins to explain, widespread use of cognitive drugs could see children being drug tested before exams, and create an underclass of workers who either can't afford, or cannot, access the drugs that give almost superhuman abilities to their fellow workers :
Foresight, a Government think-tank, believes that "cognitive enhancers" could be "as common as coffee" within a couple of decades to help a person think faster, relax and sleep more efficiently.
The Department of Health has become so concerned about these drugs that it has asked the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) to assess the potential impact of the substances, some of which are licensed in Britain to treat narcolepsy or acute tiredness.They are already being bought illegally over the internet in the US by people who think they will enhance their performance in the classroom and in the office.
Researchers at Cambridge University recently examined the effects of modafinil, a drug available in Britain for people who fall asleep involuntarily, and found that it dramatically improved performance.
Within two hours of taking the drug, healthy volunteers were better at remembering strings of numbers, were less impulsive and had a better short-term memory.
In addition to drugs that boosted pleasure and sexual performance, the Foresight research raised the possibility of drugs that caused selective amnesia, for instance of a bomb attack, after the discovery that drugs called beta blockers could reduce memories of stressful situations.The report stated: "In a world that is increasingly non-stop and competitive, the use of such substances may move from the fringe to the norm, with cognition enhancers used as coffee is today." Other possibilities, it said, would be drug testing of children before they took exams to ensure that some did not cheat with cognitive enhancers, or "cogs".
One problem raised by the report is that the pharmaceutical industry may change its focus from drugs that treat mental health to cognitive enhancers.
